Friday, July 20, 2012

MacBook Pro with Retinal Display

macbookpro with retina display

Display excellent, excellent performance, enhanced autonomy, but the top of laptop Cupertino is not a computer for everyone. And not only for the price

For the netbook is credited with having stopped the race to specific computer manufacturers increasingly exorbitant, to finally focus on the essential: to write, check email, surf the web. Now the category is in sharp decline, but perhaps without these computer-toy would not hesitate even devices like the iPad, as the technical specifications do very well without. And instead show how important weight and size: this explains the huge success of Apple's MacBook Air, which is certainly not the most powerful laptops on the market, but the one that best combines all lightness and speed, range and screen size.

The selection of laptops Apple has ever developed on two series: an entry level and for professionals. Until last year the first was represented by the MacBook, then the MacBook Air. The MacBook Pro offered larger hard drives, more powerful processors, optical drive, a wider range of connections, for a price not much higher than the economic series. But the Air has a very painstaking design and extreme portability (especially the 11-inch model). The distinction seemed clear, at least until last month, when Tim Cook has introduced its first MacBook Pro with Retina display, along with the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air renewed. The new top of the Apple laptop has an Intel Ivy Bridge, but lacks the optical drive and hard drive is solid state, two typical features of the Air, which comes even close to the thickness without being tapered like the other . "One day all computers will be so, it said Steve Jobs presented the new version of the Air with solid state hard drive in 2010. And the MacBook Pro Retina is exactly in that direction (will not be alone, you can bet: 13-inch version could come as early within the year).

The new laptop incorporates technology "Retina" applied on iPhone and iPad with the fourth generation of its smartphone, Apple doubled the screen definition in both height and width, quadrupling the total number of pixels, after which the same has happened with the tablet, in step dall'iPad2 the current model. The new MacBook has four times the pixels of the standard model, for a total of 5.1 million, 3 million in more than one TV in Full HD. The density of the pixels is less than that dell
iPad, which is in turn less than that of the iPhone, but, considering the different distance which is held with respect to the three units, the result is basically the same: sharp text as if they were printed , color, rich details never seen before.

Here Jonathan Ive yet refined aesthetic criteria of the MacBook Pro, for example, the power button is included in the keyboard, top right, where is the MacBook Air, has gone button dug in a separate circular body of the computer. It also improves the arrangement of doors, which are now distributed on both sides of the unit (in the Pro is impossible because the left side is occupied by the Superdrive slot). The new laptop is not exactly lightweight (2.02 kg), but instead is more solid and rigid that the MacBook Air is standard, and this makes it even more enjoyable to use the keyboard, already excellent in design and size .

Use it immediately perceives the speed of your computer, but it's not just the processor to make a difference: they also contribute to the Ram memory at 1600 MHz and the solid-state hard drive. The result is that the retina is faster than the Apple portable, off sharply and even the MacBook Pro standard. You start in a few seconds, the programs start immediately, the sites are loaded in a flash. And here the problems begin: if the interface of OS X Lion is updated to the new high resolution display (and of course Mountain Lion, due out in days), the same can not be said of web pages or other software, the rare exceptions. Thus, in the splendor of 15.4 inches and 2880 by 1800 pixels, the text might be perfect, but the images will appear grainy on the internet. This using Safari, Chrome and Firefox also because the text is slightly blurry (but new versions of both browsers should solve the problem). You can experiment 'with the monitor controls, but they only have five presets (strange, considering the typical customer of the unit, just imagine that a professional image.) So for a fast Photoshop but not yet optimized, there is VLC which has just released a version of its media player compatible with the Retina display. The videos in full HD is spectacular: perfect by definition and color, absolutely devoid of shots (and they sound even better than usual, thanks to redesigned speakers). Curiously, however, is the scrolling of web pages that the new MacBook seems a bit 'less smooth than the standard model. Both take two graphics cards, the integrated Intel and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of memory (absent in the standard 13-inch), and the operating system to automatically choose the most suitable one: if you need maximum autonomy is the internal processor Otherwise, the outer one provides the best performance.

But, beyond the technical data, the Retina display is certainly the most impressive feature of the new top of the Apple laptops: and it is because it is in front of a monitor who we are when we work on the computer, and improvements in the definition, in the nature of color, in the view of it now and appreciate all the time. A powerful processor is helpful, but if a computer has a mediocre screen, awkward keyboard, a trackpad inaccurate, a battery does not last long, the entire user experience will not be equal. The MacBook Pro Retina, however, from these points of view is an excellent product, and so is autonomy, which exceeded 7 hours promised by Apple. Tested with Geek
bench, MacBook Retina was almost three times more powerful than the MacBook Air 2011 (score of 11034 against 4605), not only - obviously - in the processor and graphics card, but also with regard to hard disk, always at least 50 percent faster, despite both devices fit them a solid state disk.

Sure, it may be objected that the new laptops come from Cupertino missing Firewire ports, audio input and the network connection (but there are two USB ports and two 3 Thunderbolt, in addition to the SD card reader, an adapter for Gigabit Ethernet costs 29 euros). You can criticize the high price or the inability to expand the memory at a later time (applies to both the Ram and for the hard disk), one may wonder if it really was no need to introduce a new power connector (on May Safe2), incompatible with the previous one and with the Apple Cinema Display. It may be noted that in normal use heats up a bit ', although it is true that the new cooling system is quieter than that used on earlier models. One can say that much power and a screen definition so high sense only for image professionals, photographers and videographers. But in reality, the MacBook Pro has only one real drawback, it is impossible to attribute to Apple: leave to return to a normal computer is really difficult.

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